It was a bright California Saturday morning. The stadium was relatively peaceful, with only a few people milling about, cleaning and prepping for the next show. A mere 12 hours earlier the world’s biggest band performed an incredible set in front of 40,000 admiring fans. I was in the audience, enjoying every moment and singing along to every song.

Now we were back in the stadium for the second day of our shoot, and the moment I had been waiting for – the chance to actually walk on U2’s stage. Rocco, U2’s stage manager, called to me from across the field. The time was now. We were technically working, and so I had to keep my game face on and stay focused on the task at hand of shooting the claw – the iconic staging structure designed and created to support the largest touring shoe in history. Inside however the fan in me was doing cartwheels.

I had been a U2 fan since the tender age of 14 when at a winter youth group retreat a kid in a khaki army jacket put a poorly dubbed cassette of “War” into my walkman and sent me off for a cold evening walk across a frozen lake in Northern Ontario. Seems he thought my musical horizons needed a little broadening. Walking alone on that frigid winter night, hearing those songs for the first time was a liminal moment for me, one that changed my perceptions of music and the world around me forever. –

Now some 27 some years later here I was walking up the stairs and onto the stage as a boyhood dream comes full circle. Grabbing my mic, I stepped to the x marked in gaffer tape centre stage, as my cameraman snapped away. Hoping not to be noticed, hoping my spontaneous act would be seen as reverential and not as insouciant.

But the punk in me knew the punk in the band would get it. And to go home and not to have grabbed the moment, reached for the fleeting feeling of looking out at the stadium (however empty) and imagining being in those boots, in front of a sea of fans.